A Trail In The Snow
by 89thLetter
Summary: AU. What if Zack survived the fight against the soldiers. And When a evil force threatens to destroy the lifestream forever. will he come out of hiding to protect all that he loved? A Zack/Cissnei story wif some Zack/Aerith


Right now I just cant do it

**Title: ****A Trail In The Snow…**

Author: 89thletter

**Disclaimer: I own ****nothing …………**

**Hi guys! T****his is my first story on this web. I will be using all the ideas stuck in my head, some ideas from different movies I saw or books I read. So some might look familiar. So I hope you can give me great reviews and enjoy my work This would be a Zack/Cissnei with some Zack/Aerith**

**By the way, my storyline would be different from the normal FF7/Crisis Core.**** First of all, Zack didn't crash through the church and met Aerith. 2****nd**** I would change their characters abit, like some skills and all. I would add in some other information, and add in some new characters. Not important characters but it would just help wif the story line the rest is basically the same, Zack protecting Cloud, and him dieing. Well the story picks up here.**

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_**How**__**'s my mother doing…?**_

_**She's**__** worried about u…**_

_**Now that you have gotten yourself in such a mess**__**,**_

_**She's**__** worried you won't find a wife…**_

_**That's**__** so ridiculous…**_

_**Nice parents huh? **__**…**_

_**They're doing quite well**__**…**_

_**I**__** see…**_

_**If they're well **__**that's good…**_

_**Honestly**__**…**_

_**Well what about yours**__**? …**_

_**I was raised by shin-ra**__**…**_

……………………_**.**_

……………………_**.**_

_**Anyway **__**Cissnei…**_

_**Do you think you could talk to my mother for me? …**_

_**That's true. It'd by my pleasure**__** …**_

_**Just don't say anything that would make them think you're my bride to be**__**…**_

_**I've already told them**__**…**_

_**How could you tell them something like that!**_

_**Cissnei!!  
That isn't my real name…**_

_**--MidgarBatterField 08:30--**_

**T****hat fateful conversation was running through his mind as he laid, dying on the battlefield.**

**H****is only regrets was that he couldn't know her real name, couldn't spend more time with her, couldn't get to know her better… hell he didn't even know her real name…**

**That single thought gave him a glimmer of hope, something to live for. Sephiroth, Angeal, Genesis, and many more, all dead. For what? Trying to outlive their destinies? He can feel the death surrounding him, the whole legion of Shin-Ra soldiers, every single one of them dead. At what cost… to bring him down? What did he do……?**

**H****e could feel the mortal wounds on his body…**

**H****is blood flowing down his head…**

**T****he countless of bullets riddled in his body…**

**H****is eyes were opened…**

**B****ut he could no longer see…**

**W****as he dieing……?**

**He wanted to cry out, shout out a scream of anguish, let out his bottled feelings, but all he could muster was a weak tiny moan… a moan of a dying person with so much to live for…**

**I****t was getting darker and darker in his head…**

**T****hat happy memory was starting to fade away…**

**H****e tried to grab on to it…**

**B****ut it just kept sliding away…**

**What was the name of that redhead…?**

**Sliding away……**

**H****e could hardly feel himself any more…**

**T****he pain was gone…**

**A****nd in its place was peace…**

**Zack knew that he was dieing…**

**He would have welcomed it, embraced it. But one certain memory suddenly came screaming back to him. He opened his mouth and muttered one word…**

**Cissnei…**

**There was a blue flash…………**

**Hours later****……****t's been dark for quite awhile. He could hear the unsteady rhythmic sound, feeling the contact from his head to the balls of his heel, the feeling of the hard midgar mountains on his back. It smelled fresh… like an early morning. Smelled like **_**rain…it was cold**_

**S****lowly he opened his eyes… the dark cloudy skies looked back at him… it was indeed raining and actually snowing… the droplets of rain and small little snow flakes seemed to wash away everything… his feelings… his thoughts… It never did snow in midgar before, he knew that he wasn't dead nor dreaming, there's something too rational about these sensations.**

**He could hear the hard thumping of feet now, probably in hard-sturdy boots. There's a thump followed by a faint whoosh. He could feel his entire body being lifted up and dropped into what seems to be a back of a truck.**

**A Voice: "He barely looks alive"**

**Second Voice: "I wonder if he can even make the trip…"**

**Third Voice: "Stop wasting time… Bag it."**

_**--Unknown Location 16:30--**_

**The porcupine hair-ed soldier's return to the world wasn't like coming back to consciousness after a round of sparring or a hard blow to the head, which he'd done several times before, and it wasn't like waking from sleep either. It was like he was coming back from the dead.**

**Total blackness gave way to the dark gray of rain clouds, then the lighter gray of fog. He could feel himself lying on a soft cushion, a comfortable bed, something he had not have in a long time. Slowly, Zack opened his eyes.**

**  
He turned his body and can feel the bed creaking. He wasn't able to see clearly, his vision blurry, but he could make out that he is in a room. A small homely room.**

**A**** hand stroked his brow. He could feel it but not see it – fingers trailing across his skin, pausing here and there to massage a knot or line. Delicious, like an ice cold mako energy drink on a hot day…**

"**Relax…"**** a young women's voice said… Certainly the first woman he thought of was someone from what seemed like an eternity ago…**

**He stopped thinking and let the questions go, and concentrated on the cool hand stroking his brow. At some point he thought he could hear the girl stood up, as she did, he could have sworn he heard the jingling of tiny little bells.**

**L****ater, he felt the same person sitting on the side of his bed, he wanted to get up, to open his eyes and take a closer look. But he couldn't, he was took weak… **_**im not ready**_** he moaned to himself.**

**H****is lips felt dry, his body weak. He just wanted to fall back to sleep.**

_**T**__**hen you better get ready Zack! Or you will never be a first class soldier!**_

**That was the voice that always seemed to come when he tried to slack off****… It was the voice of Angeal… his soldier in arms, his good friend… another dead friend…**

**He could feel someone****'s soft fingers touching the center of his brow, rubbing away the frown forming there. Then he could feel the hands leaving his fore head and picking up his hands instead, holding it, the fingers gently stroked his hands.**

**Zack slowly opened his eyes and took in the sight in front of him, flushed cheeks, smooth skin and a pair of great green eyes. The lips below them opened faintly at the sight of Zack.**

"**Hey…"**** her soothing voice sounded like music to Zack's ears. "You're awake… Finally..."**

**Like as if she read his mind, she said ****"we found you on the mountains, barely alive. We brought you back here to nurse you."**

Zack painstakingly sat up and muttered, "thanks, but wheres the here, and who are you…?"

**The girl gave him a cute smile and said cheerfully, "you're in the midgar slums, and im Aerith!"**

_**--SomeWhere Inside Shin-Ra Building 14:27--**_

**C****issnei swung her arms forward, her right arm caught the Wutai troop across his face and sent him stumbling backwards. He tripped and fell, his head slamming into a fallen log. She parried two slashes from the remaining Wutai troop's katana with "Rekka" her gigantic crimson shuriken. Before swinging again, connecting with her Rekka, sending the Wutai soldier to the ground, blood gushing from his mortal wound.**

**A single Crescent Wutai Warrior, with the thought of saving his land, and too full of pride to stay down, came at Cissnei like a mad man. Cissnei blocked the swipes easily and knocked his sword off from his grasp. The Wutai soldier now without weapons, lunged towards Cissnei.**

**Cissnei dodged, grabbed his arm, twisted it around, and rammed Rekka up his rib. The remaining soldier, showing his true color picked himself up and ran away.**

**Cissnei ran up ahead and saw the Wutai warrior between two exits, he was not sure of where to go. Cissnei ran after him. He saw her and quickly ran to the right.**

**She put on a burst of speed and just as she turned around the corner…**

_**Zack?...**_

**A completely dazed C****issnei was unable to lift up Rekka in time as Zack raised his buster sword and swung it down.**

**-Simulation Over-**

"**What the hell was that?" Cissnei angrily pulled out her head set and shouted to the technician. "You told me this was a simple Wutai soldier training! You never said anything about that!"**

**She burst out of the simulation room. Just as she was about to shout at the technician again.**

"Calm down Cissnei…"

"**Tseng…" Cissnei muttered before turning her head away. She couldn't let him see her like this. Tears are threatening to fall again. It's like watching the video of Zack getting shot over and over again. And shin-ra even banned them from going to collect his body, but what could they do…**

**Shin-ra is the boss… The Turks had no say in anything…**

"**Cissnei…" Tseng said putting a head on her shoulder, "Im sorry but you have to go to the hospital bay now… it's Shizune."**

_**--Shin-Ra Advanced Medical Research Center 18:31--**_

**An hour ****passed then two, and finally a doctor in dark green scrubs and square thick rimmed black glasses wearing a Shin-ra suit pushed through the swinging doors. He walked towards Cissnei and Tseng, his face was plastered with sweat.**

"**Im Dr.Gast, you're here for-?"**

**Cissnei spoke first, "How is she"**

"**Well**** we've got her stabilized, but I don't know how long that'll last."  
"What's wrong with her?" Tseng asked**

"**We don't know yet, we are running test. It's clearly a Mako infectious agent, but of what type we don't know. Her symptoms are unique- too unique for fungal, viral or bacteriological.**

"**I want to see her." Cissnei said.**

"**We got her in level 4 containment, you-"**

**  
"I know that. Suit me up." Cissnei said firmly, "I want to see her."**

**Dr.Gast looked hard at Cissnei, ****"her condition… it's not pretty. Are you sure you want to-"**

"**Suit me up." Cissnei repeated.**

**Cissnei had been inside level 4 environments before and hated the experience for the typical reasons. The lack of freedom. She owned her survival over the years to a number of things, relentless training and practice, superb conditioning, quick thinking, dumb luck – but all of them were useless without freedom, the freedom to move quickly and freely. The ability to react in the blink of an eye saved her more times that she could remember. With level 4 shin-ra suit on, its bulbous helmet, oversized boots, and bulky gloves left her feeling as vulnerable as a new born infant.**

**L****ed by a pair of doctors, Cissnei was taken first to a locker room where she changed into one-piece surgical scrubs with bootied feet, then on to the first Plexiglas airlock alcove where she was helped into a level 4 Mako-Hazard suit. The doctors checked her from head to foot for proper fit and, satisfied that there were no gaps or tear, hooked her into the oxygen system, a series of hoses that hung from swivel tracks in the ceiling.**

**  
****Cissnei heard a gush of air rushing into her suit felt it fill her headpiece. The oxygen, so cold on her skin, she felt goose bumps rise on her neck, had a slightly metallic taste.**__**One of the doctors checked the gauge on her arm, said "positive vent" and then they guided her to the second airlock. Beyond the Plexiglas wall, under the cold glare of the fluorescent lighting, she could see a single bed with a figure in it. Shizune's face was turned away; all Cissnei could see was her ear, the curve of her jaw, the clear nasal cannula tube snaking over her cheek towards her nostrils.**

**Another Mako-Hazard-suited figure ****– a nurse or doctor Cissnei assumed – stood besides the bed, reading a vitals monitor and making notations on a clipboard.**

**Cissnei felt a pat on her shoulder, "You're set," the nurse said, "when the airlock door closes behind you, the next one will open. There's a panic button on your wrist cuff." Cissnei looked down, saw the square, stamp-size red button beneath a hinged clear plastic cover.**

"**If you run into trouble, just push it and we'll get to you within sixty seconds. Do you understand?" Cissnei nodded.**

"**The**** air lock are operated from the outside. When you're ready to come out, walk to the air locks and give us the thumbs up. We'll process you out. **_**Do not**_** force your way out. If you do, we'll have to pump a sedative into your oxygen supply. Do you understand?"**

**Cissnei nodded again. She felt another pat on her shoulder followed moments later by the sucking swish of the airlock door closing behind her, she heard the muffled surge of the air movers bringing the airlock back up to full positive ventilation.**

**The door before her slid open.**

**Stepping carefully, C****issnei shuffled towards the bed. Above her head she heard a metallic rasping, and it took a moment for her to place it: the oxygen hose's track, sliding along behind her. As she neared the bed, another suited figure came around to her side.**

"**We've got her on a fairy high dose of pain meds," the woman said, her voice muffled by her head piece, "she's mostly lucid right now, but don't be surprise if that changes, she comes and go."**

"**Could you give us a moment?" Cissnei asked, trying to hold back her tears as she looked at Shizune.**

**Shizune's eyes fluttered open, and her tongue, swollen and grey, darted out to lick her cracked lips. With what looked like a painful effort, she turned her head and face Cissnei.**

**Cissnei let out a sob. It took everything she had to not scream, and at the moment she knew regardless of whatever diagnosis Dr.Gast came up with, Shizune was a dead woman.**

**Shizune's hair, once naturally thick, long and naturally red like Cissnei's, had fallen out in clumps, leaving behind a jigsaw puzzle of pale, blue veined skull. What little hair remained looked brittle and had turned yellow white. Her once beautiful to die for face was shrunken, and the skin paper thin and nearly transparent, clung to her cheek and jawbones as though her face had been shrink wrapped. Her eyes, once a deep blue, had been leached of all color save a tracery of ruptured, bloody capillaries. Her pupils were black pinpricks. The tendons and veins and arteries bulged from the flesh of her neck; it looked like a pair of skeletal hands had encircled her throat and were precariously holding her neck in place. No Shin-ra-wood (Hollywood .) special effects wizard could have created what Shizune's face had become.**

**Shizune's eyes stared vacantly at Cissnei for a long five seconds before Cissnei saw the barest flicker of recognition. Shizune opened her mouth, revealing blackened gums, and whispered something. Cissnei knelt beside the bed, took Shizune's hands and gave it a squeeze, and leaned in closer to hear. Shizune's fingertips were scraped raw, the nails on several of them torn away.**

"**What Shizune? Say it again."**

"Good to see you again, wimp."

**Cissnei spend ten more minutes with Shizune before she drifted into unconsciousness. Cissnei signaled that she was ready to come out, and the same doctors processed her through the airlocks, helped her out of the biohazard suit, then left her to change into the locker room. ****Five minutes later, she was back with Tseng and Dr.Gast.**

**  
"****How long has she got? Cissnei asked.**

"**Difficult to say."**

"**Try," Cissnei said with a little steel in her voice.**

**Dr.Gast spread her hands. ****"Days. Three at most. What ever diagnosis we come up with wont matter. She's already in advanced multiple organ failure; we're past the point of no return there. The best we can do is keep her comfortable."**

"**Do that," Cissnei said, "I'll be back."**

**Cissnei and Tseng turned to leave, but Dr.Gast stopped them with a question. "If you don't mind… I saw you holding her hand. Are you a family or friend?"  
**

**Memories of Shizune came back to her. Big old Shizune protecting her from bullies in school. Protecting them from her drunken father.**

**  
Cissnei turned back, her eyes filled with tears, looking at the floor, "a little of both I guess… She's my older sister."**

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**Dr.Gast was as good as his word. ****Two days after arriving at the Shin-ra advance Mako Research division, she died. Cissnei who spent as much time as they would allow her at Shizune's bedside in the airlock hospital room had gone to the cafeteria to catch a quick breakfast when the crash code was called. Cissnei returned to find Dr.Gast emerging from the airlocks and a trio of nurses at Shizune's bed removing the IV's and monitor leads from her now-lifeless body.**

**Still lacking a diagnosis, Shin-ra erred on the side of caution and flew Shizune's body to the Mako Agent Disposal Facility near the slums, where it was cremated in a closed incinerator, then stored in the bowels of the facility inside a specially designed lead/ceramic composite container where they would throw it into the slums.**

_**--Turk's Base Of Operations 6:51--**_

**Cissnei swiped her ID badge through the reader outside the Turk****'s headquarters situation room.**

**T****here was a muted beep and the reader's LED turned green. Cissnei then pushed through the door. Decorated in earth tones and lit by soft halogen track lighting, the situation room was dominated by a long diamond shaped teak conference table. The walls were lined by forty-two -inch, high definition LCD status boards and monitors that could be calibrated to display a variety of information ranging from weather local and foreign news broadcast, radar feeds – virtually anything that could be digitized and transmitted. Four computer workstations, each with enough processing power to control the electrical grids of a small country were built into each of the long sides of the table. That's the benefits of doing all of Shin-Ra's dirty jobs.**

**Cissnei had called the Turks her home for more years then she could recall. Being picked up from the orphanage she and her sisters were living in at a small age.**

**Cissnei grabbed a mug of Mako coffee from a nearby coffee kiosk and poured herself a cup and sat down at the conference table.**

**  
"****Morning," said Tseng.**

"**Hey…" Cissnei replied, taking a sip. The coffee was hot and almost bitter, with a touch of salt. Tseng must have made it. Zack used to drink it all the time.**

_**Cissnei! This coffee is just so **__**wonderful!! Try it!! Salty coffee gets you more energetic then doing ten thousand squats!!**_

**Again she cant helped by thinking about him, her life is starting to fall apart. Her sister died, and the person she ****… died as well. She can't get herself to fill in that blank in the sentence. One of the Turk trainings was to be able to block out all useless emotions. Fear, excitement, and … love.**

"**You don't have to be here." Tseng said/**

"**Yeah I did," Cissnei replied, "do we know anything? Anything from Gast?" Tseng pulled a manila folder from the stack behind him and slid it across the table to Cissnei. He said nothing. Cissnei stared at his eyes fir a few seconds until he looked away, **_Very bad news…_** she thought.**

**Cissnei opened the folder and skimmed the CCCD's report. Finally she looked up and said, "What the hell is J.E PuH 19?"(Just borrowing the word from splinter cell cause it sounds cool. :D)**

"**PuH 19 is plutonium hydride – 19," Tseng answered, "it's a negative hydrogen ion that attaches itself the J.E , which I will come to later, which is exposed to pure oxygen. Usually comes in the form of fine particles – think of flour, but about a thousand times finer.**

"**Almost a gas," he added, "it's also pryophoric, which is a fancy way of saying it's an auto igniter. Its flash point is below room temperature. It's also reactive to water or even humid air. In fact its so touchy, the only safe way to handle it is in a pure nitrogen or argon atmosphere."**

"**Sounds lovely," Cissnei said, "Contagious?"  
**

"**Not once it's inside the body," Tseng replied. Its hydride particles settle in the tissues on organs and begin … dissolving them. Sorry Cissnei, there's really no other word for it."  
"Its okay. Where's PuH-19 come from?"**

"**Plutonium based weapon production."**

"**Which is good news isn't it?" Cissnei asked, "its sharply narrows down the list of where Shizune picked it up."**

"Yeap. It sure hell does, but good news?" Tseng replied, "If you considered the fact that Shin-ra is the only company in the entire word that has access to PuH-19. Our boss that is…"

"**And not only that," he said, putting down the folder and picked up another one, "It's about 100 times deadlier then plutonium. A speck of PuH-19 the size of a head of a pencil is enough to kill a room full of people. And Shizune, I suspect didn't even come close to PuH-19. Contact is likely to result in instant death. She might had only seem it or smelled it and have already died."**

"**Worst of all?" Tseng said opening the folder. "J.E, also know as Jenova's Essence. Shin-Ra scientist were able to extract fluids from Jenova's earthly body. And one single drop by itself is powerful enough to light up the entire midgar for thousand of years. Imagine what destruction one drop could actually do."**

"**What we found out was that Shin-Ra scientist were actually harvesting the PuH-19 and J.E together, making a formula that's as powerful as both combined." He looked at Cissnei's face and then replied, "Yes, we spied on our on boss too."**

**Cissnei raised an eyebrow and replied, "****but what does that have to do with anything."**

"You don't get it…" Tseng replied. "J.E PuH-19 is actually a mako-parasite. Its exactly what you think. It eats mako based substances. The problem is, we have never seen a chemical that does this. Technically there's no reason why this couldn't exist. There are enzymes we used to clean up oil or mako spills all the time. They feed on the substance, neutralize it, then die and degrade and become part of the food chain."

"**But we are not talking about that are we?" said Cissnei.**

"No. im talking about a self – sustaining organism that feeds on mako – based substances – from

**M****ako fuel we put in our cars, to mako battery we use in everyday life, then replicates and spreads, just like a fungal colony would. See, the thing about this chemical is that its hearty, tenacious stuff. Its hard to kill or neutralize, and harder still to make sure you've killed it all. It can lie dormant of years – for **_millennia_ – **then just flip itself back on and pick up where it left off."**

"**So what does this have anything to do with anything?" Cissnei asked.**

"**Everything… since they have limited supply they only have one shot to destroy what they planned to destroy" Tseng answered, "The unlimited source of energy, the spirit of our planet. They are aiming for the soul of the planet Cissnei, they are aiming for the life stream."**

**A/N: ****Cliffy hangy storyline. R&R pls! Ur reviews are appreciated :D do you guys wan me to continue with this storyline? Cause I looked through some stories and none of them were like this . And if any of you have ideas or wan to help me wif the story, feel free to contact me .**


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